The Old Wives' Tale eBook

Their hand-grasp was very intimate and mutually comprehending.
He was pleased by the quick responsiveness of her
temperament, and the masterful vigour which occasionally
flashed out in her replies. He noticed the hardly
perceptible distortion of her handsome, worn face,
and he said to himself: “She’s been
through a thing or two,” and: “She’ll
have to mind her p’s and q’s.”
Sophia was pleased because he admired her, and because
with her he dropped his bedside jocularities, and
talked plainly as a sensible man will talk when he
meets an uncommonly wise woman, and because he echoed
and amplified her own thoughts. She honoured him
by standing at the door till he had driven off.

For a few moments she mused solitary in the parlour,
and then, lowering the gas, she went upstairs to her
sister, who lay in the dark. Sophia struck a
match.

“You’ve been having quite a long chat
with the doctor,” said Constance. “He’s
very good company, isn’t he? What did he
talk about this time?”

“He wanted to know about Paris and so on,”
Sophia answered.

“Oh! I believe he’s a rare student.”

Lying there in the dark, the simple Constance never
suspected that those two active and strenuous ones
had been arranging her life for her, so that she should
be jolly and live for twenty years yet. She did
not suspect that she had been tried and found guilty
of sinful attachments, and of being in a rut, and of
lacking the elements of ordinary sagacity. It
had not occurred to her that if she was worried and
ill, the reason was to be found in her own blind and
stupid obstinacy. She had thought herself a fairly
sensible kind of creature.

III

The sisters had an early supper together in Constance’s
bedroom. Constance was much easier. Having
a fancy that a little movement would be beneficial,
she had even got up for a few moments and moved about
the room. Now she sat ensconced in pillows.
A fire burned in the old-fashioned ineffectual grate.
From the Sun Vaults opposite came the sound of a phonograph
singing an invitation to God to save its gracious
queen. This phonograph was a wonderful novelty,
and filled the Sun nightly. For a few evenings
it had interested the sisters, in spite of themselves,
but they had soon sickened of it and loathed it.
Sophia became more and more obsessed by the monstrous
absurdity of the simple fact that she and Constance
were there, in that dark inconvenient house, wearied
by the gaiety of public-houses, blackened by smoke,
surrounded by mud, instead of being luxuriously installed
in a beautiful climate, amid scenes of beauty and
white cleanliness. Secretly she became more and
more indignant.

Amy entered, bearing a letter in her coarse hand.
As Amy unceremoniously handed the letter to Constance,
Sophia thought: “If she was my servant
she would hand letters on a tray.” (An advertisement
had already been sent to the Signal.)